Battle.Net Is Officially No More

A while back Blizzard Entertainment had announced that they would be ceasing the use of Battle.net and replacing it with something else. Well, the time has finally come for them to bid adieu to the long-running client, and introduce something newer and better.

According to Polygon, Blizzard has changed Battle.net into Blizzard. Yes, Battle.net the client is now known as the Blizzard App.

If you head to the download page over on the official website (which is still called Battle.net, by the way) you'll see that there's now a client in the download section called the Blizzard App.

The 3MB download from the official website will first say that Battle.net is being updated, but then it will switch over and call it the Blizzard App. For first-time users, this will require a 250MB download where it will install the client so you can access all of Blizzard's popular games, such as World of Warcraft or Diablo III. For gamers who already had the Battle.net client installed on their system, and automatic update has been rolled out that changes Battle.net into the Blizzard App.

Once the client is finished downloading and updating, you can then access your favorite games through the new Blizzard App.

So, what's new exactly? Nothing.

It's just a name change. They decided upon that a while ago, where we reported back in September of 2016 that Blizzard announced that they would be changing Battle.net to Blizzard.

So, what was the exact reason for the change? Well, according to a post from a member of Blizzard, they wanted to erase the dual identity associated with the Blizzard brand of games. They felt that there were "inefficiencies" and "confusion" with having Blizzard Entertainment titles running on a service called Battle.net.

In order to limit the appearance of having a dual identity, Blizzard decided to condense down the names so that now it's just all... Blizzard.

So, does this mean the games will change? No.

In fact, all your games will stay the same. You'll still be able to boot up the client and hop into a match of Hearthstone and check out all the latest cards and overhaul for the latest season of the game. This also means you'll be able to pop open Heroes of the Storm and join up with your buddies to take down opposing teams using some mean MOBA tactics. And it also means that you'll still be able to dive into a game of Overwatch and check out Orisa for the first time.

The appellation modification is little more than for convenience sake (on Blizzard's behalf), but gamers won't be affected by this other than telling people that they'll be spending a night in playing games through the Blizzard App as opposed to saying they'll be spending the night in playing games through the Battle.net client. The cosmetic change to the name isn't much of anything special so long as it continues to offer a quality network service, and according to Blizzard everything under the hood has stayed exactly the same, so nothing in regards to infrastructure or functionality has been altered.